Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I agree. With the current values we have on freehold which is an indication of what devs want.
Gathering resource node = single degit amount of resources (at suppose max level harvesting)
Crafting a low level weapon takes 10 ingots 10 wood (This is very early since it was pulled from the crafting window he seem to accidently pull up during freehold stream)
Lumbermill T5 upgrade = 12000 Stone, 1000 Essence, 8000 ingots + 1 Core (most likely boss drop)
T2 inn bed upgrades = 2000 wood 1200 ingots 2500 feather
We dont know current conversion rates from raw resources to refine but generaly you get less in the conversion.
And all the work can be destroyed during a seige war, Freehold are high right high reward compared to all other housing and i feel most people wont actualy want to risk it.
alot of people seem to think there gonna be solo building freehold where they kinda designed for 8 people atleast with a decent amount of investment time to get them going
That level of investment is perfectly fine, and it is probable that most solo and small group players would never achieve a tier 5 sawmill.
The thing is, people would be fine with that if they were able to build a tier 3 or a tier 4 one. The thing is, the system is cutting them off from being able to build one at all.
It isn't about having the best or being the best - it is about having something.
I hope Intrepid do a better job of listening to these people that a few in the community here are doing.
I plan to
The Verran story thus far is largely one of repopulating/recolonizing a Huge world and the scarce thing is.... LAND?
Historically (and yes I know Terran history) has governments throwing land at settlers (or it being very cheap) so they will stay in a certain area to help develop commerce and labour for local asset protection.
It doesn't make narrative sense that it is so difficult to obtain. But there are 48 types of silly mounts for mayors, so all good.
Certain metals being very rare or certain animals and plants. That would make more sense. But Verra is a huge unexplored world of untamed LAND - that's the point!
I don't think your own piece of land should be easy to earn. But making it a veritable pot of gold at the end of the rainbow goes so much against narrative logic that it's almost immersion breaking for me.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
AoC design pillars
1- Engaging and immersive story
2- Reactive world
3- Player interaction
4- Player agency
5- Risk vs reward
I think the limited availability fits quite well here
2- Reactive world, check they can change hands/be destroyed via result of node wars and they are built up reactively based on the players
3- Player interaction with freehold owners when it comes to processing rights and so on or even family, also inns and all that aswell check these boxes
4, players have the ability to affect and change the game world not only owning them but also destroying them in result of node wars can change the landscape alot
5, They are high risk high reward, reward is the return you can get on the investment via higher tier process good being sold that your produce, however there a high resource cost/investment needed to get freehold to this point and they can be destroyed/lost and u can loose all the progress u made before u can get the benefits from them
People look at freehold and be like ohh well who every owns that gonna make billions but in actual fact they can cost billions too if thing play out in one way.
when it comes to housing the risk vs reward is the largest with freehold followed by in node housing and then appartments being lowest risk but least reward.
The gameplay loop the devs seem to be aiming for is player a has gathering player A harvest and list it on market, player b owns freehold so he buys players a harvested items and caravans them back to his freehold to refine (risk involved with loosing caravn) then caravans them back to node to sell them, player C buys materials from player b to craft the items and sell them. Thats the loop they want and any player can do a max of 2 of these things atleast on one account so you have to interact with other players like player B might ask player A to gather resources for him and he pay them for the task and skip the market step all together to save on taxes for listing them.
I did say ORIGINAL design pillars. Economy, Nodes, Meaningful conflict and Narrative. Became the 5 you listed yes.
You're kicking at the new goalposts (and you skipped the relevant one, No 1 Immersive Story) so I'll just repeat that it does not feel immersive for developable land ownership to be a scarcity in the game.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
I was aware the freeholds expanded with the node but I assumed 0.5 would the limit at max tier. I guess one should never assume.
they are making the way in such a way that low level stuff will be useful at high levels. its reasonable to believe that people doing t3 processing will contribute at lvl 50
1)These things are destroyable so you need to protect them to safely use them. That requires numbers.
2) Large numbers and the ability to fend off attacks means big wealth and influence.
3) Big wealth and influence means you can buy up land rights.
4) Massive land rights means you can control the game economy. Simply price out the smaller guys and gobble them up. (Or attack them with your numbers).
5) Large and wealthy groups will slowly begin to monopolize the freeholds and therefore the game.
This is basically Eve.
Freeholds are not a player feature, they are a player organization feature.
No they can't, so here:
6) Large corps seek to solidify their territory so they begin talks with other like-minded large and powerful groups. Now Alliances are born.
7) Large corps find that competing against Alliances is not possible so they begin talks of their own.
8) Alliance warfare becomes the dominant force behind most engagement, politics and espionage become paramount.
9) Alliance leaders become more influential than individual corp leaders. Corps are relegated to control various alliance zones of influence. Alliances begin to consider territory well beyond their node as theirs. Notice the language is singular.
All of this starts naturally when you bottleneck the most important systems behind a small number of doors. What you do outside these systems is irrelevant, it must all go through the freehold at some point and 1 in100 to 1 in 20 is small enough to be controlled.
However, that was not the case just a few short days ago - at least not if you asked literally any poster on these forums.
The other thing this does is it limits Ashes playerbase to those that want EVE's gameplay in this regard. Just to let you know what that is like, EVE has an average concurrent playerbase to fill half of an Ashes servers target concurrent playerbase.
Oh I know, been there on and off for 15 years now.
Edit: And you are right, that was not the impression (mine included) but with the new details it's pretty obvious. This is an economy, you just follow the incentives.
yes, people will form alliances, and guess what? alliances cant still defend everything at the same time...unless you have like 5k players on one side or something .-.
the issue isnt people forming alliances. the issue is people not forming alliances
I think it is obvious that what you said is the result, I don't think it was the intent though.
Or at least - not the full intent.
I am still sticking by the prediction I made in that other thread. I think Intrepid want organized players to have a real advantage here, but I do not for a second believe they want to cut off this kind of gameplay to the rest of the games population.
The amount of content restriction that has been announced over the last year or so is actually astonishing.
(Let's assume 2500 FH's)
(Servers may begin with fewer players, however Intrepid might also limit FH's. So we'll ignore this.)
You'll need to share.
Optimally 2500 FH's × 8 Family Members would allow for 20,000 to have direct access.
That's not going to happen, but hopefully around 1/2 that.
(Assuming a full server. Join a Family / Guild)
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Guilds
...are going to want many FH's. For a few of reasons.
1: You want your own FH? So do their members.
2: Processing Time & Location. You think 200 players are going to wait in line, so you can have a pretty home?
3: Sieges. If they have 1 FH, and it gets trashed...
If you are Solo, or a small guild, and want a realistic shot at a Freehold, you're going to need to rush to 50. After they're all sold your odds are going to plummet.
Build a family, pool your resources. Good Luck.
And if you see my name, don't bid against me. Thx
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But Sieges!!!
In UO we had IDOC's (in danger of collapse)
They were the only way to get a home "in-game" once all spots were claimed. 7 days, if not refreshed. Loot!
Dozens would camp out waiting for that moment.
If there are a lot of sieges, it's possible. Staggered, or rare,
Good Luck... You'll have the same competition, but now focused.
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Other options
Node Housing will depend on desirability.
Apartments will depend on availability.
Mayor's...build Apartments.
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Processing
If you have the necessary items to process at these levels, you just have to either gain access or have someone do it for you.
The question for solo / small guilds; Will you even have access to these materials?
Can you get the materials required to build the processing station even if you do own a FH?
How long before those with access, choose to sell these items?
We don't know. Neither does Intrepid.
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And to those... "Not all 50,000 accounts will be level50, or want a FH"
Doesn't really matter. There will be more buyers than Holds.
And you will have 5k on one side. It turns into maybe a half dozen massive groups with their politics and intrigues being the priority. The rest are navigating within other peoples territories. Is this good or bad? You be judge.
Too many bottleneck always limit the number of significant voices.
So, some issues here.
What this is doing is turning the family structure in to something that needs to be maximized in order to participate in the game. The original idea of families in Ashes was as a unit for real life friends - so that people could treat guilds as the unit that was to be maximised, while familiy was purely social.
Already this is a loss to Intrepid.
The next issue is that you are assuming people want the top tier just automatically. What people want is a thing of their own in game. It's fine if it's tier 4 rather than tier 5 - as loing as it is theirs.
There are other issues with the above, but it is blatantly clear you've been reading peoples issues with a fairly closed mind on the subject, so I don't see the point in wasting my time further.
families have been the "default" of playing some other mmorpg if you want to progress, and there was no real mechanics or incentives in those games, other than it was just convenient or efficient. and guilds who recruited these "families" were usually stronger than guilds who didnt, even on equal numbers, because of the coordination of the players inside these "families" (since you play every day with the same person, you get used to each other play styles and what you will do).
aoc is just offering extras for these types of organizations.
its not bad.
Can you point me to one game that uses the family system as essentially a firm gateway to one of the four major gameplay activities in said game?
No?
Well then, what was your point?
i literally just said there was no real mechanices or incentives in those games, as in not coded inside the game (maybe only in ragnarok where you could get married and had some stuff). you would group yourself with people and play with the same players everyday and do all the activitis together and help each other progress, share resources, etc.
Think back to the family summons - the initial mention of families as a system in Ashes. The idea of the summons was so that your friend that can't log in until a few hours after you could be pulled in to where you are so that you can play with said friend.
While that system in itself has it's many flaws, it is at least in line with the idea of what a family in an MMO should be. The idea is that it is a system that functions to assist friends in doing content together.
What it shouldn't be is a system that is required for content, or a system that inherently increases access to content.
First, "turning the family structure" I'm not building the game.
Second, T4/5 Processing isn't even material to my post, since you do not need to own a FH to accomplish that. You only need access. Pretty sure I wrote that.
This post is about buying a finite resource against stacked odds
Third, you literally support my argument in your previous post:
"The amount of content restriction that has been announced over the last year or so is astonishing"
We're on the same side. I'm worried casuals and small groups will be locked out. I'm trying to be realistic though. Individuals and small groups are at real disadvantages.
As a "solo" or small group, you will be competing against everyone at your group size, and every group larger than yours.
Larger guilds, won't need to run around the map looking for a Level 3 town, they can bid in multiple places at once.
Small groups, not really. Probably 1 bid at a time.
If you can tell me how a small group, 1-4 players is going to outbid a group of 8, 20, 50, 200.
By all means. I'd love to be wrong.
They have far greater access to resources, and far more buying power.
Also, they're more likely to be the "Hardcore" crowd. Meaning more hours and more organized.
Not agreeing with a system, is not a plan.
I think the whole point to such a small number of FreeHolds is to get people to group into Families
I am pointing out issues with how the game is being built.
you are claiming that the family system is required, as in players are required to use it to play. im saying since players will naturally group themselves into families (as in playing with a constant group of people), aoc will give them some perks that will benefit them.
its not immersive to have a billion freeholds litteraly the world look at archage housing plots for example. Also back in medeval time barely anyone "owned" the land they were on when the leader of the area can be like yeah nope cya u dont deserve it. even this day and age a large portion of the population down own land for themselfs :P so yeah rather immersive there still.
If you own a freehold and you price out the little guy by over charging for processed high teired good or not even selling them you just screwing yourself. if the citizens of your node are weaken cause ur are hording or milking them on freehold materials and as node war starts the side who not doing that will have the advantage and you can say good buy to your freehold if you loose the war.
You can also be pushing players away from your node to neighbouring nodes which diminishes your "faction" and strengthen others near you so thats like literaly digging your own grave. and considering the huge investment for upgrading freehold to the point of being useful with higher tier shit i wanna make sure the citizen of my node is the strongest i could get them to protect the assets ive invested in.
difference between most other games and AoC when it comes to conquest is that in other games it was basicly your guild vs everyone else here it your node vs other nodes, yeah could can strength your guild with gold and loot but if your the only players of the node with gear and everone else who stuck around are fighting in rags well there only so much you can do to defend it especialy if u pissed off ur old residence and they move to another node where the mayor looking at attacking urs to progress theirs well.
Has nobody realized most guilds invested in freeholds will have no reason to defend nodes or even be citizens of the nodes.
You don't have to be citizens of a node to own a freehold. So the only choice you will have during a siege is whether to protect your freeholds or let them die.
And I'm guessing it might be easier to own freeholds in multiple nodes and when one goes to siege, let it die. Don't waste the resources. If you have 11 other freeholds operating in other territories you will likely not experience much downside. And if your node doesn't change hands you get to keep the freehold anyways.
So then you would focus your combat teams on following existing sieges and scooping up new freeholds during the time period you can after the siege ends rather than participating in the sieges themselves.